


what we keep

by anstaar



Series: when the door opens [2]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Brothers, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-30
Updated: 2011-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aral and his art</p>
            </blockquote>





	what we keep

Aral started drawing because it was a useful skill. Armsman Luka (fifty three and almost a double twenty year man with a leg that trembles when he thought no one was looking and a family burned away in one white flash) took them outside and taught them how to sketch, fulling their ears with stories of pathetically out of date maps and desperate men. Tolya drew careful lines (gnawing on his lip when he got them wrong) for fifteen minutes before sitting back an laughing self-consciously at the result. Aral had almost finished his first tree (later he would learn to draw in the quick slashes that are his world for two years and even later he will realize that he's never going to get back that vision of absolute clarity that transferred the world to his paper).    
  
For his mother's birthday, Aral drew a picture of her. It wasn't a portrait because it was a surprise so he ha to use a picture. He spent hours working on the details of the face (Tolya came in, once, when he was working and stood looking over his shoulder for five interminable minutes before ruffling his hair and leaving). When the day finally came he presented the picture in Tolya's carefully carved frame and proudly accepted praise from his mother and grandparents. Even Luka nodded his approval, though he was quick to add that his map drawing skills were still far below par.  
  
Aral was halfway through the picture he was drawing for his brother's fourteenth birthday when the war started. Years later (three years and five months, a dead family and a new emperor) he found it carefully preserved in his drawing folder. Tolya and his mother were dead and Luka can't see and his father won't care but he finished the picture. The next time he visited the graveyard he burned it with his mother's at their graves and rubbed the ashes into the soil. Then, he went back home.


End file.
